Intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring is a continually evolving field that aims to localize and monitor neural structures according to their functional basis within a human patient and, ultimately, it seeks to preserve the structural integrity of these neural structures during surgery or other invasive procedures. During spinal surgery for example, several neural structures may be placed at risk for potential injury—e.g., the spinal cord, one or more nerve roots, the lumbar plexus, and many (if not all) relevant vascular supply members going to and from the aforementioned elements.
Several electrophysiological modalities are currently available for monitoring various aspects of the central and peripheral nervous system during surgery or other invasive procedures in order to maintain their structural and/or functional integrity. Each neural monitoring modality offers a unique set of benefits and limitations as well as offering varying degrees of sensitivity or specificity as diagnostic techniques. For example, the most frequently used neural monitoring modalities for spinal procedures are SSEPs, MEPs, freerun or spontaneous EMG (sEMG), and triggered EMG (tEMG). In order to optimally preserve or protect the neural structures from structural or functional damage during spinal surgery, an interdisciplinary effort among the surgical, neuromonitoring, and neuroanesthesia teams is imperative.
Beyond the acquisition and communication of data required for intraoperative monitoring lies the art and science of interpreting the numerous permutations of results offered by multimodality intraoperative neuromonitoring, during a wide variety of spine surgeries. Oftentimes it is the interpretation and correlation of this data with particular structural or functionality impingements that is of the most benefit to the surgeon and, ultimately, the health of the patient. It has been found, however, that consistent and reliable interpretation of multiple modalities of information has been lacking and the structural and functional functioning of the patient's neural system has been impinged upon.
To that end, a need exists in the prior art for a neurophysiological monitoring system which monitors the neural pathology of a patient during an operation, interprets the data of multiple modalities of information being aggregated through such neural monitoring, and communicates such interpreted information to the surgeon and/or others in the operating chamber in a reliable and consistent manner. It is to such a neurophysiological monitoring system that the presently disclosed and claimed inventive concept(s), process(es), methodology(ies) and/or outcome(s) is directed.